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Newt Gingrich:Cashing In on His Political Connections

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all of the time,
but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time!” –Abraham Lincoln

No Republican candidate running in the 2012 Presidential Primary is a bigger member of the Republican political establishment than Newt Gingrich. He represents everything that the elite Republican establishment has stood for, for the past 32 years. He epitomizes the ‘Rockefeller wing’ of the Republican Party. He is a typical ‘checked pants’ Republican. And just because he has not held an elected office for the last twelve of those thirty-two years, that does not mean that he has not kept his hand in politics, or that he has been out of the loop.

During the past twelve years, Newt Gingrich has been a well-paid Washington D.C. lobbyist, and political consultant, earning the ‘big bucks’ that his 20-year career in Congress could bring him. And with his knowledge of all the ropes, and his connections to all of the insiders, he probably feels that he is worth every penny that he charged his clients.

In other words, Newt Gingrich is a career politician who has been Cashing In on His Political Connections, and on his many years on Capitol Hill. He is a member of the political ‘revolving door club’, just like Senators Tom Daschle and Bob Dole, and Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright. Newt Gingrich is the quintessential insider, a consummate politician, and the farthest thing from the example laid down by the Founding Fathers as you can possibly get!

When George Washington retired from a long and distinguished career in public service, he did not become a well-paid lobbyist and sell his political connections and insider knowledge to the highest bidder. He got out of politics and retired to Mt. Vernon where he took up farming!

Somehow I can’t see Newt Gingrich getting down on his knees, either in prayer, or in his garden getting his hands dirty. The point being, is that the Founding Fathers’ idea of a good public servant wasn’t a lifetime in public office, separated by a decade long career cashing in on your political connections!

Let’s take a look at Newt Gingrich’s long record in public office and his lucrative career as a political consultant. As a Congressman from Georgia’s sixth district, Newt Gingrich served twenty years in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979 to 1999. He became the House Minority Whip in 1989. He became Speaker of the House in 1995. That was the same year that he delivered a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Affairs in which he said, “The American challenge in leading the world is compounded by our Constitution… either we are going to have to rethink our Constitution, or we are going to have to rethink our process of making decisions.”1 This is a direct quote from Newt Gingrich. These are his own words!

Newt Gingrich is a fan of author Alvin Toffler, who believes that our American system of government, which was designed by the Founding Fathers, and which is protected by our Constitution, has become obsolete, and needs to be discarded, and re-designed. According to Toffler (and Newt), “It needs to die and be replaced.” Newt once boasted that in order to understand him, you needed to read Toffler’s two books, The Third Wave, and Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave. When Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House, he recommended reading Toffler’s books to all of his colleagues. He wrote the forward to Toffler’s last book, The Politics of the Third Wave.

“The American challenge in leading the world is compounded by our Constitution… either we are going to have to rethink our Constitution, or we are going to have to rethink our process of making decisions.”

Those are Newt’s very own words. That sounds about as close to a regret that we have a Constitution that I have ever heard any politician say! And it was uttered by the sitting Speaker of the House in 1995, Newton L. Gingrich. It sounds to me like Mr. Gingrich thinks that our Constitution is an obstacle to overcome, or an impediment, instead of the actual guarantor of our freedoms.

Newton L. Gingrich. That’s the way that his name appears on the membership roster of the Council on Foreign Relations. This has been a training ground for progressives in America, and a beachhead for socialism, and the ‘New World Order’ since 1921. The CFR was founded and funded by east coast bankers, primarily by J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, with help from influential Europeans, following America’s refusal to join the League of Nations. Its main goal was to condition and prepare the United States for full membership in the United Nations. Today, the CFR continually advocates for surrender of our national sovereignty, and the implementation of world government. The progressive members of the CFR are globalists and internationalists. Newt Gingrich has been a member of the CFR since 1990! 2

The Council on Foreign Relations has been instrumental in formulating most of America’s disastrous foreign policy initiatives during the past sixty-five years, since the end of WWII. These policies have resulted in the rise of the Soviet Union, the Cold War, the rise of Communist China, the murder of millions of people by Stalin in his purges, and by Mao in his ‘Cultural Revolution’, the no-win outcome of the War in Vietnam, and the continuing stalemate in Korea!

The CFR’s policy statements are also responsible for the rather indecisive progress in the War on Terror around the world. Every administration since Woodrow Wilson has staffed their major cabinet positions with members of the CFR, and Newt Gingrich has been right there since 1990 as one of their most articulate and distinguished members and spokespersons. He was already a member of the CFR for five-years before he became the Speaker of the House of Representatives. If Newt Gingrich has experienced any personal change resulting from his conversion to Catholicism, it has nothing at all to do with his long political record.

Back in 1979 when Newt Gingrich was still a freshman Congressman, he helped Jimmy Carter establish the Department of Education that gave the American people Federal control over education. In 1989 Newt Gingrich became the House Minority Whip. In 1995, Newt became the Speaker of the House. In 1996, under Newt’s leadership as Speaker of the House, Congress passed the largest single spending increase to date on education in U.S. History, $3.5 billion dollars. All of this Federal money didn’t come without Federal strings attached!

Newt claims today that he believes in smaller, leaner government. But just last year he was back to his old tricks again, touring the country with President Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and Al Sharpton, promoting Obama’s ‘Race to the Top’ education policies, which hand out even more Federal money and require even more Federal regulations over local school districts. It sounds to me like the (old) dog is returning to his vomit, to paraphrase an old Biblical adage. In 1999, Newt Gingrich resigned from office over the disastrous midterm elections, in which Republicans lost five congressional seats, the worst loss to date in U.S. history for a Party who was not still in control of the WhiteHouse. (Not counting the disasterous 2010 midterm elections for Democrats.) At the same time he was involved in an extra-marital affair, and a flap over a controversial book deal.

But, Newt Gingrich can’t seem to keep his mitts out of politics for very long. Only for about as long as it takes to go on a Mediterranean cruise with his newest wife, Callista. The allure of power, prestige, and money are obviously just too strong for him. And with the help of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the mainstream media who have kept Newt Gingrich in the public’s eye for the past twelve years, and kept his name alive, the Republican Party has managed to resurrect the disgraced Speaker of the House, and re-package him in 2010 as a viable Presidential candidate. That’s quite an amazing feat of political handiwork!

What do solid conservatives or libertarians say about Newt Gingrich? The New American magazine referred to Newt in their December 7, 2009 issue as, “The Establishment’s Conservative.” This is not a compliment! His last freedom index score, taken in 1999 in the 105th Congress, when he was still the Speaker of the House, was an abysmal 50 percent. The Freedom Index is an evaluation of a Congressman’s record, based on the U.S. Constitution, and compiled by the John Birch Society, which is very good at watching for Constitutional indiscretions.

Ed Crane, the president of the Cato Institute wrote in the November 2000 issue of Forbes magazine that, “The combined budgets of the 95 major programs that Newt’s contract with America promised to eliminate, have increased by 13 percent… over the years. [Since then under Newt] the Republican controlled Congress has approved discretionary spending that exceeded Bill Clinton’s requests.”

Newt Gingrich is, and always has been, a big government, profligate spender! That is in stark contrast with his 1994 pledge in the Contract with America to lower taxes, and decrease the size of government.

Joe Farah, editor of World Net Daily, in his latest article, Newt Shows His True Colors, Again, on November 18, 2011 has also come out against Newt Gingrich. With a political record almost as long as America’s progressive slide to socialism and big government, Newt Gingrich has been as much a part of the progressive establishment of this country as any other member of Congress, past or present!